Hillary Clinton hops onto ‘Texts from Hillary’ meme

WASHINGTON -- In what may be the first approval of a meme by the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton took time to throw her endorsement behind the popular “Texts From Hillary” Tumblr account.

Based off of photos of Clinton taken by photographers Diana Walker of Time and Kevin Lamarque of Reuters, showing her aboard a military airplane and peeking at her BlackBerry, the site is based on simply captioning an imagined conversation between Clinton and another prominent figure such as Mitt Romney or Arianna Huffington. Like the many memes that came before, it quickly spread across the Web, but rarely are memes ever traced back to their source, let alone when that source is so high up in the federal government.

On Tuesday, Texts from Hillary received an official submission from the secretary of State herself, seen here, which features the two creators of the meme, Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe. Both Smith and Lambe work in Washington, D.C., and were invited to the State Department by Clinton so she could express her approval for the site.

“It was great. She came out, she was all smiles, told us how much she likes the site and that people have been telling her all about it,” Smith said in an interview with Politico. Clinton also signed a copy of the comic she made, which Smith shared on Twitter.

Smith is a communications director at Public Campaign and the Public Campaign Action Fund, and Lambe works as an account executive at Tigercomm, which manages communications for the clean energy industry. But within D.C., they may be better known for another Tumblr account, “I’m With Kanye.”

The Obama administration has been particularly keen on new media initiatives, with a Tumblr account of its own, as well as accounts on the likes of Pinterest and Instagram, while presumptive Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has largely been defined by the Fake Mitt Romney on Pinterest, or the various memes that arose from the Etch-A-Sketch debacle.

But like all trends, Texts from Hillary has come to an end. Wednesday afternoon, Smith and Lambe posted that they “think it’s time to stop while we are ahead.”

“As far as memes go – it has gone as far as it can go. Is it really possible to top a submission from the Secretary herself? No,” they said in their farewell post. “But then when you get to text with her in real life – it’s just over. At least for us. But we have no doubt it will live on with all of you on the Internet.”

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Original source: Hillary Clinton hops onto ‘Texts from Hillary’ meme